Yield Sec has recently conducted a new research. It has revealed that close to 2/3 of Super Bowl LVIII bets in the United States were illegal.
CSG or Campaign for Fairer Gambling commissioned the research. It analyzed how players chose to bet during the 2024 Super Bowl. This is looking specifically at the performance of the black market. Further research says that in the next few days, the gambling share between regulated and unregulated markets is expected.
In total 350 million bets were placed on this year’s Super Bowl, according to Yield Sec report. This values to $5.4 billion or £4.26 billion or €4.98 billion. While the betting value shot up to 20.0% year-on-year, the total bets were up by 22.8%.
228 million wagers were illegal and 122 million were legal in total. $4.0 billion were generated on illegal bets. Meanwhile, the remaining $1.4 billion were made up by legal bets. In comparison, 286 million bets were brought by Super Bowl. This splits between 186 million illegal bets and 100 million legal bets. $1.1 billion came from legal bets and $3.4 billion from illegal wagers out of the $4.5 million generated last year.
Illegal betting market makes up 65% of the Super Bowl’s betting market, while the legal market taking up 35% share. This is according to Yield Sec’s calculation.
The report states that the substitution from illegals to legals is simply not happening at the pace it should – illegals are used as brands of choice and convenience, with some substitution to legals for offer and accounts opening incentives, when available.
With 42 million more illegal Super Bowl bets recorded from this year’s game, Yield Sec noted that the illegal Super Bowl betting market had grown yearly. This year, a total of $546 million more was also wagered using the black market.
